Well, for a while there, I was feeling like I was veering off into being more of a mainstream writer (again), what with my baseball novel being more "slipstream" (for want of a better word), and my current novel feeling pretty non-speculative so far.

Well, that's all starting to change now, as I get into the weird stuff, and I find myself having more and more fun. I've got my main character searching for his son, and he starts remembering this continuing dream he's been having -- did you ever have a place that keeps popping up in your dreams? I've got 2-3 places like that, and I'm trying to describe one of them in this current chapter. It's fun, but sort of freaks me out.

But yeah, I think that's why I wasn't too motivated or excited about this novel for the first 20-25 pages -- it starts off as a standard missing-child story. But now that we're moving away from reality, it's becoming more of a challenge, and way more compelling to me.

I guess that's why I veered off into the world of SF and fantasy and horror, after starting off as a firmly mainstream/literary wannabe in grad school. I was sort of a snob about genre stuff for a semester or two, I admit, to my shame.

But the thing is, the non-speculative stuff bores me after a while, and in my opinion, the people writing THAT stuff have to come up with new ways to present their material, because they're bound by the rules of reality -- they can't use metaphors and alternate worlds they way writers of the fantastic can, and have the same effect.

So, I see a lot of mainstream writers playing with language, doing what I think are sort of silly "tricks" with themes or words ("I'm going to try to use the word yellow three different ways in this paragraph") because that's as "risky" as they can get. I like telling stories with PLOT too much to get that inward-focused. I find so much of that stuff dull as hell.

And what's interesting is that more and more "mainstream" writers are using the different tropes and tricks of speculative fiction (ghosts, superheroes, magic, dream realities) and borrowing in that way -- I guess they're seeing the writing on the wall, too.

I dunno -- I just think that writing the stuff has to be FUN, and I'm having fun with this book again, mostly because it's taken a turn for the weird...

That's it for today. I'm off to work on the jungle that once was our yard... Later!